Illegal drugs is spreading from professionals to amateurs in the world of sport, Italian police said in Rome yesterday.

The Carabiniere Police's Health and Anti-Doping Unit (NAS) announced that it seized 900,000 packets of illegal substances last year, compared to only 10,000 in 2003.

The unit also reported that it arrested 115 people as part of its fight on drug use in sport in 2004, compared with just 20 the previous year.

NAS Commander Emilio Borghini said the sharp rise showed there is a "great risk that the phenomena of doping is moving from the world of professional sport to (amateur) gyms."

"Many investigations show that the use of drugs is tending to become more widespread in gyms," Borghini added.

Among the 115 people arrested are doctors, pharmacists, managers of sporting facilities and gym instructors.

Doping has blighted Italian sport in recent years.

In December Riccardo Agricola, the doctor of Juventus soccer club, was convicted for administering blood-booster drug EPO and other medicines to players in the 1990s. He was sentenced to 22 months in jail. He is appealing against the charge.

Last February cycling great Marco Pantani died after taking an overdose of an accidental drug.

Pantani's career was ruined by a string of doping scandals, beginning the year after his remarkable Tour de France-Giro d' Italia double of 1998.

Sporting authorities, however, stressed that Italian sport is now cleaner thanks to those scandals and a number of high-profile police clampdowns, which have targeted cycling above all.

As a result Italy's professional sport has one of the strictestanti-doping regimes in the world, they claimed.